Behind the art of Best Of 2016

After months of planning, our Best Of the Twin Cities 2016 issue is finally out. Whew. While some of us were researching and writing, our art director, Emily Utne, was working on the look of the issue.

For this year's cover and section openers, we selected paper artist Jerome Corgier. The artist, who resides in Paris, France, creates layered paper sculptures through a unique process. For each piece, he started with a sketch, then transferred that drawing to colored paper, cut out the shapes, and glued the pieces together. The end result was photographed and sent to our offices for layout.

It was a very different process from our past few Best Ofs, which have employed models, locations, and photo shoots.

"For this year's Best Ofs, I was looking for work that had texture and dimension and 3-D quality to it, rather than something that was computer-generated or -created," says Utne.

To get from idea to the newsstand, we began hunting for an artist in January. By the end of February, construction of the actual pieces had begun.

"Corgier's preferred process is to create 3-D pieces rather than sending along sketches. So it took several rounds of creation to get things where we needed," says Utne.

The final letters.

The result is palm-sized letters that were built up and then laid out on colorful paper to be photographed. Meanwhile, we set up NYC-based artist Amanda Lanzone with the task of creating illustrations to be included throughout the text of the issue. There are drawings of cheeky ladies in underwear, musicians rocking out, and tattooed dudes proudly flexing.

The School of Visual Arts alum previously worked with City Pages on our 2014 Winter Guide issue.